Posted on October 27, 2020
Already an impressive U.S. Southeast commercial hub, the South Carolina Port Authority’s Port of Charleston is about to offer even greater capabilities for efficiently handling big boxships, with early 2021 boding to bring opening of the initial phase of the first new major U.S. container terminal in more than a decade.
Infrastructure investments totaling $2 billion over a six-year span also are delivering enhancements to existing container terminal abilities, while a 52-foot-deep harbor is just months away as well.
James I. “Jim” Newsome III, a former Hapag-Lloyd (America) Inc. president who is entering his 12th year as president and chief executive officer of the South Carolina Ports Authority, has ample reason to be stoked.
“If you look at the 10-year timeframe from the last recession up until 2019, we doubled our volume in 10 years, and that was largely due to the manufacturing business in South Carolina,” Newsome told AJOT, noting that a doubling of advanced manufacturing jobs in the Palmetto State has coincided with a doubling in Port of Charleston containerized cargo volumes. “It’s really amazing.”
Automotive and tire segments have led the way, he said. BMW has invested $10 billion in South Carolina since 1994, when the BMW Spartanburg plant opened in Greer, while Volvo unveiled a manufacturing facility in South Carolina’s Berkeley County in 2018. And SC Ports handles automotive cargos for beyond the state’s borders, including for the Mercedes-Benz factory in Vance, Alabama. Meanwhile, Michelin has multiple tire plants in South Carolina.
SC Ports appeared poised in its fiscal year ending June 30, 2020, to eclipse its record container volume of fiscal 2019 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, resulting in a total 2.8 percent year-over-year decline in 20-foot-equivalent units moving through its container terminals for the 12-month period, with 2.32 million TEUs handled.
“Life looked pretty rosy, and then, all of a sudden, China shut down due to the pandemic, which meant a lot of the offshore manufacturing shut down,” Newsome said, adding that forecasting future volumes is now very difficult, with expectations hinging upon widespread vaccine availability.
Source: ajot.com
